


thorns in the rose garden

by ultalumna (yujael)



Series: smile, goldfinch (as you look daemons in the eye) [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Assassination Attempt(s), Coma, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Near Death Experiences, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 09:25:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19373890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujael/pseuds/ultalumna
Summary: Charity galas involving chocobos are Prompto's scene and he regrets absolutely none of what comes from that.





	thorns in the rose garden

**Author's Note:**

> I was gonna fill prompts that weren't "the world tries to kill Prompto in increasingly specific ways" but my mind was glued to this one so I had to get it out in the end.
> 
> So the prompto was: "Prompto inadvertently takes a bullet for Noct; While attending a Royal event/ party (cuz his best bud invited him), Prompto drinks a poisoned drink meant for Noct.
> 
> \+ Noct can't even go see him because he's on lockdown. Doesn't even know if his best friend is alive  
> ++ The only reason Prompto makes it is because of the MT thing"
> 
> And, well, it's my jam, you see. Prompto has a much nicer time in store for him after this I PROMISE.

Royal galas aren’t usually Prompto’s scene. Charity galas are a little closer to the mark. Charity galas that his best friend invited him to come with the territory. Charity galas that his best friend got him into to celebrate the opening of Insomnia’s very own chocobo forest?

That’s his fucking _scene_. Prompto probably would have done something treasonous if he hadn’t been invited to see the chocobos.

There aren’t actually many chocobos to see, though. The gala is all contained in the Royal Memorial Garden, the closest garden space to the forest, and the organizers only saved space for two chocobos and they won’t let Prompto have all the time he wants with them. 

This is fine, though. He’s at a fancy party in a fancy suit that he didn’t have to pay for, he gets to eat all the finger food he wants and nobody minds the bright yellow feathers clinging to his collar or cuffs after he gets his third turn hugging the birds. Prompto’s in his element, so content, so confident despite being surrounded by nobility that he’s pretty sure he could cause a ruckus in front of the king and not even worry about it. 

Not a big ruckus, though. A little one, but only by noble standards. Like stealing a drink or something. He’s pretty sure the king likes him, so he’s double sure it’d be fine. Like--

Chocobos. One just… Right there, so bright and fluffy. Confidence. _Yeah._  

There are no drinks to steal when Prompto finds his way back to Noctis again, nor any kings to steal them in front of, but he still tells Noctis about his plans fueled by the bravery bestowed upon him by the chocobos as he slides into the open space between Noctis and the rose hedge he’s standing next to, keeping away from most of the guests while still appearing generally happy.

 _Genuinely_ happy, too. Probably because the gala is relevant to his interests for once. Who doesn’t enjoy chocobos with a dash of conservation effort?

“Do it,” Noctis deadpans. “I dare you. Double dare you.”

“I’ll do it,” Prompto assures him.

Gladio and Ignis are standing nearby, sharing a small plate of desserts. Gladio snorts but chooses to eat chocolate instead of commenting. Ignis asks that he doesn’t escalate to actually causing a scene in that tone of his that says he doesn’t believe Prompto will stick to his guns in the first place.

“I’ll do it,” Prompto insists, making Gladio laugh. “I’ll steal the cup right out of your hand, Noct. Glass. Flute thingy.”

Noctis grins wider. “Makin’ it worse, buddy. Specs won’t even look at you.”

“It’s too late to tell people he’s never met me,” Prompto says nonchalantly, waving a hand. Ignis is the one who tied his tie, anyway. There’s no stopping him.

Almost no stopping him. It’s just easy to forget about his plans when he’s with Noct, is the thing. They get carried away in conversation as the night goes on, and they fall into a back and forth routine of joking around one moment and standing with straight backs while Noctis and some passing noble thank each other for their involvement in the whole affair like some weird back patting circle.

Prompto doesn’t even realize that the chocobos have been escorted out of the garden until King Regis appears on the edge of their little circle and thanks Noctis for sticking around for so long.

“Of course,” Noctis says, shrugging lightly. “Chocobos, right?”

“What better place would you have to be?” Prompto adds in a half-second fit of confidence. 

Regis smiles in that small way of his, the kind Prompto only sees on rare occasions. It isn’t often he sees the king and even rarer are the times Prompto’s seen him drop the mantle just enough to look more dad than king. 

Regis stays for a little chatter with Ignis and Prompto wonders idly how much longer they’ll be allowed to just stand around in a corner before Noctis get volun-told to make one more pass around the garden to schmooze and promise more donations to help care for the chocobos. Probably only as long as it takes them to finish a drink from the platter that’s swinging around to their side of the garden. 

“Drinks?” Gladio says to the group, looking at Prompto in particular with a tilted grin. He flags the steward down before Prompto can figure out a way to say that maybe being _rude_ in front of _the king_ is actually a bad idea now that the chocobos have gone away to sleep without saying any of it in front of said king.

“Oh, I’m parched,” Noctis says, reaching for a flute as soon as it comes within reach. “There really is no chef like Ignis.”

“The tarts were a little on the dry side, weren’t they?” Ignis says. 

The steward only has three flutes left on his platter and he seems to vanish into thin air as soon as all of them are gone. Gladio and Ignis each hold one but clearly have no intention of actually drinking them while they watch Prompto squirm. Noctis slowly raises his to his lips and Prompto thinks _fuck it_.  

He snatches the drink right out from under Noct’s nose and downs it in one go before handing the empty flute back. 

“Told you I’d do it,” he says quickly. He turns to King Regis because if he’s gone eight yards he might as well go nine. “Noct dared me to,” he explains. “They said I wouldn’t.”

“He came up with it,” Noct adds, just to incriminate Prompto.

Regis blinks down at Prompto a few times, probably wondering why he let his son let this pleb in here to pull stupid, rude stuff like that. But then there’s that look again, the dad one.

“A man of your word, I see,” he says, turning back to Ignis smoothly. 

Somewhere beyond him, Gladio laughs out loud. Prompto can’t tell where because he’s quite suddenly wholly and completely sure that if he so much as twitches, he’s going to throw up. The taste of sparkling water is lingering on his tongue, but it sits in his gut like curdled milk, like needles and rot. 

He thinks, faintly, that someone spiked the drinks. Except he’s had alcohol before--the hard stuff, even, because of a different terrible dare from Gladio--and it doesn’t make his fingers shake the way they are now, or make the world so nauseatingly unsteady so fast. This is so much worse than that.

Prompto catches movement from the corner of his eye, even though his vision is decaying badly. He follows Ignis’ outstretched arm to the flute in his hand, to Noctis’ fingers wrapping around it and taking it. Alarm bells ring.

“Hey,” Noct protests, a little irate now as Prompto clumsily bats at the drink in his hand. Prompto doesn’t care. He tries again, but he can’t really control his trembling hand anymore. “You had yours--Prom?”

“Don’t,” Prompto croaks before the bile crawling up his throat reaches his mouth, burning and foaming. 

Noctis drops the flute. Or maybe the world drops Prompto--right off a cliff into a pit of agony, surrounded by harsh echoes and nonsensical shadows. It’s too much and then nothing all at once and Prompto hopes with everything left that he got his warning out in time.

 

||| * |||

 

They won’t let him in, even though days have passed. Too much danger, they say. Until such a time as the would-be assassin and his collaborators are rounded up, Noctis is stuck in a Citadel apartment he doesn’t even live in anymore and surrounded by guards who won’t let him see his best friend. Won’t even tell him if Prompto’s still _alive_. 

He’s got to be. Ignis would have told him otherwise, would have told him that the imprint in his mind of Prompto lying on the ground, pale as a ghost, lips smothered by foam while his body seized, would be the last Noctis would ever see of him.

Or Gladio. Gladio is willing to be cruel when he needs to be.

Except Gladio hasn’t left Noctis’ vicinity since the gala. He’s always there, glaring Noctis down whenever Noctis tries to make a break for it.

“Come _on_ ,” Noctis growls at him in the doorway. 

Gladio shakes his head. “Nope. We’re staying right here and you know it.”

“Don’t you even care?” Noctis asks. He’s reaching the end of his patience and doesn’t care if it’s a low blow.

“ _Hey_ ,” Gladio snaps back. “Shut up, Noct. You know it’s not like that. The hell do you think Iggy’s been running around doing? Think he’s been walking in the park?”

Noctis releases a ragged sigh and turns back toward his untidy bedroom. He’s barely seen Ignis, either, but Ignis has brought small updates whenever he could. Gladio has to stick around, though. Has to be the Shield. 

Like clockwork, Ignis shows up for dinner before disappearing again. Then, hours later, he appears when the clocks have ticked from too late at night to too early in the morning to be awake. Noctis usually isn’t awake, either, but he can’t close his eyes. He just sees Prompto when his eyes started rolling back again. 

Ignis doesn’t even need to try to rouse Noctis to know that, too. He simply stands in the doorway and says in a low voice, “Come with me, Noct.”

“Where?” Noctis asks, sitting up.

Ignis shushes him. “Quickly. The Crownsguard believe they’ve caught the perpetrator and Gladio has been called to identify him.”

“And in the meantime?” Noctis whispers as Ignis all but yanks him from his chambers.

“We’re going to medical,” Ignis answers simply. 

Noctis’ body is wired with energy despite the early hour. He follows Ignis’ quick pace, looking sedate when they pass pairs of guards in the corridors. He _knew_ it, and the confirmation is like a weight lifted.

“I argued against keeping you in the dark for much longer,” Ignis says as they take a somewhat roundabout route to the medical wing, navigating service corridors more often than not. “Prompto has been under surveillance but there’s been no indication of further danger, and the poison that was used has been identified.”

“What was it, then? Voretooth bristles?”

Ignis hesitates, the seconds between breaths tightening a cord around Noctis’ ribs. “No. The agent they used is extremely rare and several times more deadly. It was malboro essence, Noct.”

Noctis’ stomach drops. Extremely rare and deadly are understatements. Nobody sane goes after those creatures. “Do we even--there’s no way we have the right antivenom for that.”

Ignis shakes his head once. “We don’t. The ingredients have been requisitioned and the staff have made do with standard antidotes in the meantime.”

“ _Made do_ \--”

“You must understand, Noct,” Ignis interjects, finally coming to a stop in front of a door and facing Noctis. His expression is a grim mix of hard and soft. “Malboro essence is one of the most toxic substances on the planet. Poisons derived from it are among the most fatal. With the dose that he took… Prompto should already be dead.”

The words are like ice shards piercing through Noctis’ body. He shakes his head in numb denial of a fact that isn’t true yet, even as he comes to understand the reason that Ignis has actually brought him here. 

“He’s not--”

“He isn’t,” Ignis says. He inhales deeply. “Somehow, he’s hanging on when he should have been dead long ago. It gives me hope for his chances, but the fact remains that there’s no telling how much longer he can hold out before the proper antidote is prepared. I… did not wish to gamble any longer.”

He rests his hand on the door handle between them. Noctis hones in on it, on the faint shaft of light underneath the door.

“He’s in there?”

Ignis nods. “I will warn you, though, Noct. He’s in a fragile state. If all goes well, he will breathe on his own again soon, but there’s been no word on when--or _if_ \--he’ll wake up. This will not be like the last training accident that sent you up here.”

An understatement. The last time Noctis was in this wing, he’d stayed for less than half an hour. Prompto has been here two days already and conscious for none of it. He won’t be there to talk to Noctis, to assure him that everything will be fine. 

Noctis knows that he’ll be lucky, painfully lucky, if he ever hears Prompto’s voice again at all. 

“Okay.”

Ignis raps twice on the door with his free hand before opening it. He leans inside, exchanges muted whispers with someone on the other side, then steps back to allow a guard to pass. Then, he nods silently toward the open door. Noctis goes, and the door clicks shut behind him.

Beyond the whirring of the respirator, the room is utterly silent. The curtains are pulled over the windows and a single lamp in the corner provides all the light Noctis needs to see as he crosses to the bed, where Prompto lies disturbingly still.

His skin is too pale, too frail looking and bruised. His hair is limp and his eyes look sunken, unmoving under the lids. And for the first time, he does not react at all to Noctis’ presence. 

It’s an awful thing, Prompto’s silence. Noctis only makes it worse by being unable to break it. All he can do is take the chair left next to the door and pull it over to the bedside and think about how much of a miracle it would be if Prompto woke up and didn’t need a tube stuck down his throat anymore. He’s already coasting on the miracle of Prompto being alive in the first place, though.

“Hey, buddy,” Noctis says, finally. He reaches out, and Prompto’s arm is cool to the touch. “You gotta keep holding on, okay?”

 

||| * |||

 

There are ghosts that come and go, washing out the darkness with a soft touch, a warm voice. Sometimes there’s only a presence on the edge of awareness. Sometimes there are murmurs when everything else has gone.

“I owe you thanks and more when you are awake,” the ghosts say. 

 _I’m right here_ , Prompto wants to say. He’s right here.

“Hard to believe this is him,” the ghosts say. “Of all the places to wind up.”

“I do not believe he is a threat.”

“Didn’t say he was. You’ve seen his bloodwork, though, right? Nevermind how many times over he should be dead, the kid might not even _need_ an antidote when he’s done chewing this up and spitting it out.”

 _Not a kid_ , Prompto wants to say. He’s not. Kids don’t join the Crownsguard and protect people. 

“Keep hangin’ in there, Prompto,” the ghosts say.

 _I’m right here_ , Prompto wants to say. He’s not hanging anywhere. He’s pretty sure he’s not. But no one will listen to him.

“You’re gonna be okay,” the ghosts say.

 _I am okay._  

“Got a surprise for you later,” the ghosts say.

“Don’t just _tell_ him.”

“He cannot hear us.”

 _I can hear perfectly fine_ , Prompto wants to tell them. Why won’t they listen to him? He wants to yell and throw something, but the ghosts are gone.

It’s only Noct left, warm and solid and light at his side. 

“You gotta wake up, Prompto,” he says, tired and quiet. “They’re gonna get lonely without you. I already am. Come on.”

Noctis--lonely-- _shit_. Prompto feels like he got wrung through a garbage disposal and then flattened a little, dragged along the concrete and washed down in the mud. He _way_ overslept. He’s going to have to become as attached to coffee as Ignis is to catch up again. 

“You gotta come back,” Noctis continues.

Suddenly, inexplicably, Prompto is annoyed. He’s _right here_ , isn’t he? Right next to Noct, close enough to hear and feel. Gods, though, is getting that point across exhausting.

“Prompto?” Noctis asks, suddenly stressed. He moves, jostling Prompto’s arm and grabbing his hand and completely wiping out all the progress Prompto had made to move it. “Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand? Anything?”

Prompto is so confused, but if that’ll help move things along--

“Ignis!” Noctis shouts. Prompto squeezes his eyes tight. It’s the best he can do against the loud noise. 

“What’s going on--”

“He’s waking up--”

Starting to regret it a little, too. Prompto knows he overslept, but he’s still bone tired. He doesn’t know what he did last night, but he kind of wants to never do it again. Fucking bets with Gladio. 

“Are you sure? It’s rare for patients in a coma to truly wake up in one go.”

Sucks for that guy, Prompto thinks as he squints at the ceiling. He needs coffee last night. Mix it with an energy drink. Just fuck him up, but not as much as before. 

“No, I’m telling you--” 

And then Noct is there, blocking out the harsh light with his whole face, eyes wide and lips stretched in a tentative smile. 

“Prompto!” he exclaims so, so loud. Too loud. “Can you hear me?”

Prompto groans. He’s too tired for this. 

“How do you feel?”

“Tired,” Prompto says. “Fine.”

He’s pretty sure he says it, anyway. His brain has taken the admission and run full tilt away from him with it, leaving him to sink back into darkness.

Noctis laughs. It’s a weird sound, too heavy despite how happy he sounds. 

“Yeah,” he says, faint as a dream. “You’re okay, Prompto. You’re gonna be fine.”


End file.
